The introduction of the personal computer in the early 1980s lead him out of marketing and into working for a tech firm, first a video game company called Control Video. After the Atari crash and the layoffs at Control Video that followed, Steve remained, and became the CEO of the company. At this time he shifted the company's focus from video games to online services, under the new company name Quantum Computer Services. QCS partnered with Tandy, who at the time was providing Prodigy, one of the most popular (and one of the few) online service providers in the 1980s. (The other being CompuServe, a company which Case and AOL would eventually buy.) The partnership with Tandy endured for several years when, in 1991, Case decided to go independent with a new company called (wait for it...) America Online.

After a shaky start (which some say never ended) and growing competition, AOL went public in 1992 and Case became very, very rich. He has been the only CEO that AOL has had for its entire existence, and when the merger with Time Warner came along, he also tacked "Chairman of AOL Time Warner" onto his business card.

To most of the world, Steve Case is pretty much invisible. To geeks, he's the AntiGeek, due to several factors: his marketing background, his 600-pound gorilla of a product, his anticompetitive practices (i.e. buying Netscape Corp. and Nullsoft Inc., among many others (though not nearly as many as Microsoft has) outright), and of course, that stupid introductory email that all new AOL subscribers receive, which has always pimped lackluster features and promised the moon, only to deliver a pile of rocks. Despite all these things, he's got an awful lot of money, which, in America, makes him invincible.

On January 12, 2003, Steve Case announced that he was resigning as chairman of AOL-Time Warner. He will remain on the board of directors, but not have much real power anymore. This is due to the Time Warner half of the company overpowering and, if their plans come to fruition, assimilating the AOL half of the company.

Fun fact: Case also sang lead in a couple of new wave bands in the 1980s, and while he was in college he made his living selling... fruit baskets. Also, Steve's cousin Ed Case was elected to the 108th United States Congress, representing Hawaii.